David Kirkpatrick brings us an open and honest view of the adventures of Mark Zuckerberg and friends, who started Facebook in Zuckerberg's dorm room when he was a student at Harvard University. The book would read like fiction, if you didn't know it was true.

If I had read "The Facebook Effect" back in 1978, I would have found it to be future fiction. I would have likened it to Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" (1961) in which an innocent, even naive, creature comes to our planet and, with little experience of the human race, brings humans together in ways that only an innocent can.

There are no Martians in "The Facebook Effect" and no one dies, but the innocent nature of Facebook's initial partnering is key to the story past, present, and future.

It took only a few years for Facebook to become the preeminent online social networking site and a global business giant, reaching 500 million users this summer. It has affected the way we communicate personally, professionally, and politically, across nations and continents.

As one of the most successful startups ever, Facebook also has affected the way business executives approach innovation.

Kirkpatrick, who has written extensively about the Internet and technology in his position as a senior editor at Fortune magazine and as the creator of Fortune's Brainstorm conference series, had access to interviews with principal players that no one else has ever had. That access, combined with Kirkpatrick's own experience in the growth and ever-changing nature of the Internet, makes him a master in telling this tale.

The story of how Facebook came to be (beat out various competitors and opened up the world to a kind of scary connectivity unprecedented in any form in history) is among the most compelling business narratives of our time.

"The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World" by David Kirkpatrick; Simon & Schuster (335 pages, $26).